vivweb01

I first published this blog in November 2022 and revised it in December 2024. I've revisited it now (Nov '25) to coincide with the surprisingly radical reforms suggested by the new Home Secretary and provided some comments on prospects of sucess. ***** This is a particularly controversial topic, and has been foremost in our minds in UK since Putin’s Ukraine invasion and its migratory aftermath.  There are no hard and fast solutions to what is now effectively a global problem, but I'll attempt to provide some suggestions, and will focus primarily on our own issues with controlling illegal migration to the UK. The many crises and disasters occurring in other parts of the world are continuing to drive further migration ‘waves’ and will continue to do so over the coming years as resources become exhausted in some areas of the world and our species' population continues to increase unabated. This is a worldwise phenomenon, driven by the stark inequalities between 1st and ...

 Editor's Note: I've reproduced this article from a guide I put together recently for my website on what to do if your remote dies on you, or gets damaged or lost. You can download this as a .pdf version, which also contains some additional useful illustrations. It's available via this link . ---------------------------------------- Introduction One of the most essential, and also potentially annoying, modern inventions is the infra-red remote control. Virtually every electronic device we use nowadays comes with a dedicated remote of some sort, and a lot of the more recent models have been designed so that they won’t work at all without it. Many of us have already suffered the consequences of this clever move on the part of the manufacturers after we’ve either a) lost the remote for our TV or b) one of the kids has broken it or c) the dog has taken a bite out of it (or the cat's been sick on it - moggies are never blameless!). The resulting lack of a working re...

  Rachel Reeves has a thorny problem on her hands.  She needs to decide within the next 3 weeks (i.e. before the budget on Nov 26 th ) whether to break the key manifesto promise Labour made in order to get themselves elected in 2024, i.e. not to raise Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance. She knows that breaking this promise will be a highly unpopular move, not least with her back-bench colleagues, and doing so, however justifiably in her eyes, could spell electoral suicide for the party. If the opinion polls are anything to go by, the process of Labour's decline started as soon as she announced the near abolition of  WFP last July; it could really start to snowball in May of next year, in the aftermath of the predicted whitewash of Labour seats in the next round of local elections. The chancellor is also facing the increasingly gloomy financial outlook for the UK prophesied by the OBR, and is desperate to give herself as much financial ‘headroom’ as possible wit...